The Ayotzinapa Platform: What happened to the 43 disappeared Mexican students?

Through an online platform, Forensic Architecture has reconstructed the events surrounding the disappearances, with the goal of furthering the investigation of the case that's still unclarified three years later. Español

As part of an on-site visit to Mexico, a delegation of the IACHR visited the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa, in Iguala, Guerrero State. Photo: IACHR (Flickr). Some rights reserved.

In Latin America,
constantly worrying about the safety of one’s growing children is second
nature. First nature, I’d say, as evidenced by the first words my father
pronounced as he hugged my mother after a burglar broke into our home in Brazil
with her inside: “What if the kids had been home?”

I was only a kid – 9 or
10 and my brother two years younger. This fear only worsens as Latin American
children get older and begin to venture into the world on their own. So when 43
teenagers and young adults on a trip to Mexico City to
commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre vanished,
every Latin American parent at one point must have thought: “It could have been
my son.” I know my mother did.

Another anniversary of
the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College students in Iguala,
Guerrero, Mexico is upon us. After three years, more questions have been raised
than questions have been answered. Details of exactly what took place between
that Friday and Saturday remain unclear. Official investigations claim the
town’s mayor, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, and his wife orchestrated the kidnapping and killings. However, other reports point to the involvement
of federal forces while others
accuse the Mexican Army of direct involvement in the kidnapping and murder of the students.

These families deserve
closure. With them in mind, Forensic Architecture, a London-based agency that
conducts research on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights
organisations, and political and environmental justice groups, has
reconstructed the events of Sept. 26 and 27, 2014, which is presented as a
forensic tool for parents, investigators and the general public to further the
investigation. Below are the details of how to use the platform, which was
launched today.

As part of the on-site visit to Mexico, a delegation of the IACHR visited the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa, in Iguala, Guerrero State. Photo: IACHR (Flickr). Some rights reserved.

The Platform

A project by Forensic
Architecture in collaboration with Centro Prodh, EAAF,MUAC for the families of the 43 disappeared students from
Ayotzinapa.

An interactive
cartographic platform which visualizes, for the first time, the attacks that
led to the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico.

Combining cartography
and 3D modelling, the platform shows:

• The progression,
escalation and geographic spread of the violence of the night of 26-27 Septiembre
2014

• The level of
coordination and collusion between state agencies and organized crime

• The extent of the
disruption and distortion of evidence by state agencies

The case of the 43
disappeared students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico has been comprehensively reconstructed,
for the first time, showing the entirety of the known events that took place
that night in and around the town of Iguala, in Mexico’s Guerrero state. It is
presented as a forensic tool for parents, investigators and the general public to
further the investigation.

Commissioned by Equipo
Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF) and Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel
Agustín Pro Juárez (Centro Prodh), acting on behalf of the families of the the victims,
Forensic Architecture, a University of London-based investigative agency
specializing in

spatial and data
analysis, has designed a new investigative tool to map and examine the multiple
overlapping and conflicting narratives of that night.

Forensic Architecture
has comprehensively reconstructed, for the first time in three years, the sequence
of events and the magnitude and complexity of interactions that led to the disappearance
of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico. Forensic Architecture analyzed and cross-referenced
open-source data, the report produced by the Mexican state’s controversial investigation
in the case, as well as the resulting reports from the work of the independent Interdisciplinary
Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) and the available work of investigative journalists.

Protest for the 43 missing students of Ayotzinapa in front of the Embassy of Mexico in Buenos Aires. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid (Flickr), CC BY-SA 4.0.

The work and methodology

Forensic Architecture is
a university-based research agency whose work for human rights groups and legal
teams has been presented worldwide, in international trials and UN forums. The
group is composed of architects, journalists, coders and filmmakers.

The first and most
important of our sources are two reports by a group of five experts referred to
as the International Group of Independent Experts (GIEI). The GIEI was
appointed by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights to carry out – with
the consent of both the State and the families of the disappeared – a thorough
investigation of the case. Their year-long work highlighted inconsistencies and
irregularities in the official state investigations and proposed a series of
recommendations regarding the search for the missing students.

Another important source
for the work is a book by journalist John Gibler, ‘An Oral History of Infamy”.
From October 2014, Gibler undertook interviews with the surviving students of
the Iguala attacks. These testimonies provide an invaluable oral history of the
event from the point of view of its victims.

The work was produced in
stages and included data mining reports, classifying multiple tags and mapping
existing evidence in time and space.

a) An interactive
cartographic tool overlaid on a satellite image of the town of Iguala,

reconstructing events in
time and space, looking at the relation between actors, incidents and two – way
communications, throughout that night in and around Iguala.

b) Interactive 3D models
of three of the crime scenes.

c) A series of videos
exploring themes and theories surrounding the events.

d) An exhibition at the
Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City where FA
Ayotzinapa investigation will be presented to the general public and where
guides can train the public in the use of the platform. This is part of a
broader exhibition on the work produced by Forensic Architecture as a whole.

View the development of the attacks with the adjustable
timeline. And use the play button to animate these events.

Explore the relationship between violence, coordination and
movement.

3D Models:

Interactive 3D models can help you understand the main
attacks against the students at the level of three of the crime scenes (Juan N.
Á lvarez, Palacio de Justicia and Cruce de Santa Teresa).

Use the mouse (holding and moving left/right buttons) to
move across the model. Scroll up and down with the mouse wheel to zoom in and
out.

Add people or actions to the 3D models, so the events
happening during that lapse time show upin the screen.

Explore several iterations by clicking the arrows at the
bottom of the explanatory text for that specific time lapse.

Laptop users: the right button is the secondary button on
your trackpad. Adjust your preferences as you like for a better user
experience.

IMPORTANT
NOTICE:
The events on the timeline determine what you are seeing on the map, so make
sure you are selecting the proper time lapse so you can see the events on the
map (some events happened after that night, e.g. remains found at R í o San
Juan). Some events are not located in space, but they do have a set time, which
would appear on your timeline. Beware the time precision, which could be
according to the source, sequenced from other events, estimated by FA or just
linked to GIEI’s publication date.

All the material released today will also be available to
the public at an exhibition at Museo Universitario de Arte Contempor á neo
(MUAC), as part of a broader exhibition on other investigations conducted by
Forensic Architecture. This exhibition opens on Saturday the 9th of September
at 1:00 pm and runs until early January 2018.

Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, that undertakes advanced architectural and media research on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights organisations, as well as political and environmental justice groups.

Manuella Libardi is a Brazilian journalist. After completing her professional internship at democraciaAbierta (2017), she is currently a freelance correspondant in Lisbon. She holds a Masters degree on International Relations.Twitter: @ManuellaLibardi

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